Depending on your operating system distribution and the package you used during installation, you could have Dropbox files in two different locations. The instructions in this article are for both cases, so some of the commands may result in an error.
- Open your Terminal application.
- Copy and paste the following lines one at a time into Terminal. Press Enter after each one.
- Don't type commands by hand.
- You may be prompted for your computer password (not your Dropbox password) after entering the commands. The password field in Terminal remains blank as you type your password. After you type it, press Enter.
- You'll know that these instructions complete normally once the initial line of text (called prompt) appears.
- Important: In the commands below, we assume that your Dropbox folder is in the default pathway. If you placed your Dropbox folder in a custom location, replace all instances of ~/Dropbox for the full location of your Dropbox folder in quotation marks. For example, if you have your Dropbox folder in the path /Volumes/DifferentPlace/Dropbox, replace ~/Dropbox from the following command lines to "/Volumes/DifferentPlace/Dropbox".
- Once the Terminal prompt shows up again after a command, the instruction completed the requested task and is ready for the next command. If any of the the commands do not respond after an hour, try restarting your computer and try these steps again.
dropbox stop
dropbox status # Should report "not running"
rm -rf ~/.dropbox-dist
rm -rf /var/lib/dropbox
rm -rf ~/.dropbox*
sudo apt-get remove nautilus-dropbox
sudo apt-get remove dropbox
rm /etc/apt/source.d/dropbox
sudo chown "$USER" "$HOME"
sudo chown -R "$USER" ~/Dropbox
sudo chattr -R -i ~/Dropbox
sudo chmod -R u+rw ~/Dropbox
Deleting any of these folders will not delete the files in your Dropbox folder.
3. Restart your computer.
For an installation on a supported Linux distribution with Graphical User Interface:
- Get the correct package for your operating system and architecture. Download now.
- Navigate to the folder where you downloaded the installation file and double-click it.
- Apply any selective sync preferences you had before the reinstall.
- Select the Dropbox folder location, if not in the default location.
- Important: Because this process removes the previous preferences and configuration, if you wish to avoid re-syncing your Dropbox content you will need to manually choose the location for Dropbox to sync to. If you don't you'll create a new Dropbox folder and start to sync your content again.
- To select your established Dropbox folder on your drive, click Advanced Settings after choosing which folders to sync.
For an installation on a supported headless Linux distribution:
- Enter the following command into your terminal:
- If your machine is 32-bit:
cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86" | tar xzf -
- If your machine is 64-bit:
cd ~ && wget -O - "https://www.dropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86_64" | tar xzf -
2. Run the Dropbox daemon from the newly created.dropbox-dist folder:
3. When Dropbox finishes installing, sign in and apply any preferences from before the reinstall to the list of excluded items.
Learn more about installation and CLI information.